Mystery Wrasse (Pseudocheilinus ocellatus) in my home aquarium.

My mystery wrasse is one of my favorite fish, but has been extremely difficult to photograph.  This photo was taken with a Pentax K20d with a 100mm macro lens at f2.8 and 1/90s and was edited in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).

For all those who have digital cameras and have not been shooting in raw, you should really try it out.  The newest versions of photoshop have ACR built into them at not extra cost for processing raw images; otherwise, you can download freeware programs like Gimp and UFraw.  (I used these programs before acquiring the license Adobe CS 5).  Working with a raw image is like working with a negative and it is much easier to make edits in the post-processing.  Working with a jpg is like working with a print; there is less information for you to work with.

For this image in ACR, I adjusted the white balance to take out the green tint that shooting through non-starphire glass will give a photo.  I also deepened the blacks a touch to compensate for the brightness of MH lighting.  After that, I cropped the photo to square and saved.  I try not to adjust the color brightness or vividness in any of my photos because I want the art to actually imitate life.